Irish Times Blog Listings?

The Irish Times has had a bumpy relationship with the web. Its coverage of technology during the dot.bomb era ran the gamut from utterly clueless to to downright wrong with the odd detour to accurate reporting. The web really does not know what goes on in that walled garden of a site that is the Irish Times. Apparently it now has an embryonic blogs listings. Though it refers to them as “weblogs” rather than the more common term “blogs”. The range of blogs is limited and is more like a short list of the blogs that the Irish Times people read rather than a comprehensive list of blogs - Irish or otherwise. The Irish Times blog directory was mentioned here by Dave O’Neill on his blog.

The Irish Times’ technology section is Pay Per View. Most people on the Irish web don’t pay to read the IT’s technology section’s OpEds, blatent product pimping and unfortunately few news items. Like the technology sections in most newspapers since the dot.bomb era, the IT’s technology section has shrunk too. Since web events and business are now day-to-day news topics, the idea of a dedicated technology section is perhaps harder to defend.

Though if the Irish Times did add a weekly blog listing to its Friday “Technology In Business” [1] section, it would, in a strange way, be returning to its roots. The IT’s Computimes section, a computer/net/comms section that preceded the “Technology In Business” section, used to have a listing of websites, bulletin board systems (BBSes) and interesting links. The Computimes section was respected and considered clueful.

So could the Irish Times be starting its own blog listings? Stranger things have happened - the Sunday Tribune has its own little column on the Irish blogosphere. Though Irishblogs.ie and planetoftheblogs.com are far more useful and comprehensive listings of Irish blogs.

[1]: Apparently I confused the title of the Irish Times “Technology In Business” section with the Sunday Business Post’s “Computers In Business” supplement. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between them but ironically the error was pointed out by John Collins, former editor of consumer PC publication PCLive who is now an Ireland.com employee and freelance contributor to the Irish Times technology section.

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Written by John McCormac on August 23rd, 2005 with comments disabled.
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1 comment

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Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com bernard
#1. August 27th, 2005, at 1:56 PM.

hmm,

well until the Irish Times open their door to the PPV site, I don’t really think that people will actively take notice of them.

(I do however have access to a subscription to the Irish Times through my office)

I have paid for a subscription to The Economist (this works for both paper and website articles), but the main difference is the quality of reporting on IT matters in The Economist is a damn site better that in teh Irish Times.

rgrds,
bernard